Stories and Pictures Part 63

"Plague take a woman's tongue!" she mutters then, exclaiming against herself:

"The _small_ barrel! Whatever for? To please the driver? Driver be blessed! Can't he give his horses a few more oats for once?"

Grumbling thus over the stupidity of a woman's tongue, she has just managed to doze off. From beneath the counterpane appears a red kerchief that falls dangling round about her face and her pointed red and blue nose.

She breathes heavily, and presses one bony hand to her old heart. Who knows what she is dreaming? Perhaps that the driver has broken his word, and she is left for a whole year without Parnosseh.

The opposite corner belongs to Yoneh the water-carrier.

The wife and two children sleep in one bed, and Yoneh with the elder Cheder boy in another.

Now and then a sigh issues from the beds. Here also people have lain down in sorrow.

The little Cheder boy has been crying for money to pay the rabbi his fee.

And the eldest daughter was left without a situation. She had been doing well, as servant to a couple without children. Suddenly her mistress died. So she came home--she could not stay on alone with the widower.

There were a few rubles owing to her in wages--they would have been just enough to pay the rabbi--but the widower says it is no concern of his, his wife never mentioned it, and he doesn't know--he never mixes himself up with the affairs of women.

They quarrelled a little before going to sleep. The mother advised going to the Jewish court, the daughter was in favor of writing a pet.i.tion either to the _natchalnik_[1] or to the _mirovi_.[139]

Yoneh will not hear of doing one or the other.

The widower will take his revenge, and get Yoneh a bad name among the householders: "He has only to snap his fingers and there's an end of me!" How many water-carriers are there already loafing about with nothing to do since they started the new water-supply?

Beril, the porter, all by himself in an upper bed, is snoring away like a broken-winded horse. The two children sleep together in another place.

His wife is a cook, and this evening she has a wedding supper on hand.

Here, too, rest is broken.

Beril has an ache going through his bones, one after the other, and the eldest son sighs frequently in his sleep. He works in a lime-kiln and has burnt his foot.

Further on lies another snorer alone in a bed: Tzirel, the street-seller. In the second bed sleep all three children. Her husband is a watchman. No sooner has _he_ come in than _she_ will go out, with bread and fresh rolls.

We are already in the third corner, where stands another--this time an iron bedstead.

A flushed, unhealthy-looking woman's head is set off by a bundle of rags that serve as pillow.

Her prematurely parched lips open frequently, and a heavy sigh escapes them. Her husband's profession is a hard one, and he has no luck. Last week, at the risk of his life, he conveyed away a copper kettle and buried it in the sand outside the town--and it was discovered. Who knows what he will bring home to-night? Perhaps he is already in jail. It is three weeks since she set on to boil so much as a kettleful of water--and they are clamoring for the rent.

"A hard life and no luck!" sigh the parched lips. "And one has to be on one's guard against neighbors. They are always asking: 'What is your husband's trade? What keeps him out so late?'"

Over all the beds flickers a pale light from the centre of the room. It rises from between four canvas walls that bound the kingdom of a young married couple.

Treine, the young housewife, is still awake. She has only been married two months, and she is waiting for her husband, who will presently return from the house-of-study.

The oil lamp is burning and throws pale patches on to the blackened ceiling. A few feeble rays come through the rents in the canvas walls and dance upon the beds with the poor, worn-out faces.

In Treine's kingdom all is brighter and cleaner.

Between the two beds, on a little white table, lies a prayer-book flanked by two little metal candle-sticks, her wedding gifts. Wedding garments hang on the wall, also a Tallis bag with the s.h.i.+eld of David embroidered on it.

But there are no chairs in the kingdom. Treine sits on one of the beds, making a net to hold the onions which are lying beside her, scattered over the sheet. The soup for supper is keeping hot under the bed-clothes.

The door of the big room opens softly. Treine's cheeks flush, she lets the net fall out of her hands, and springs off the bed. But then she remains standing--it would never do before all the neighbors. One of them might wake, and she would never hear the last of it. The neighbors are bad enough as it is, especially Freude. Freude cannot understand a wife not beginning to scold her husband the very next day after the wedding. "Just you wait," she says, the old cat, "you'll see the life he'll lead you--when it's too late." Freude leaves her no peace.

"A husband," she says, "who is not led by the nose is worse than a wolf.

He sucks the marrow out of your bones, the blood out of your veins!"

It is ten years now since Freude had a husband, and she has not got her strength back yet. And Freude is a clever woman, she knows a lot.

"Anything that he has a right to," she says, "fling it out to him as you would a bone to a dog, and--"

Treine has time to recollect all this, because it is some minutes before Yossele manages to steal on tiptoe past all the beds. Every step he takes echoes at her heart, but as to going out to meet him--not for any money. There--he nearly fell! Now he is just outside the part.i.tion walls. She breathes again.

"Good evening!" he says in a low voice, with downcast eyes.

"A good year to you!" she answers lower still. Then: "Are you hungry?"

she asks.

"Are _you_? Wait."

He slips out between the part.i.tions and returns with washed and dripping hands.

She gives him a towel.

On a corner of the table there is some bread and some salt and the now uncovered soup.

He sits down on his bed, on the top of all the bed-clothes, she on hers, with the onions.

They eat slowly, talking with their eyes--what about, do you think?--and with their lips about the way to earn a living.

"Well, how are you getting on?"

"Oh," he sighs, "three pupils already!"

"And that is all we have to depend on?" she asks sadly.

"_Ma!_" he answers with gentle reproach.

"G.o.d be praised!" she is consoling herself and him together.

"G.o.d be praised; but that only makes one hundred and twenty rubles," he sighs.

"Well, why do you sigh?"

"Add it up," he answers; "one ruble a week rent, that's twenty-six rubles a season. And then I'm in debt--there were wedding expenses."

"What do you mean?" she asks astonished.